Contact centres are the first point of contact between a company and a customer after the purchase of a product or service. These centres make use of contact centre agents to service customer queries. In the past contact centres hired as many agents as they could in order to service customers, which have led to an increase in personnel costs causing contact centres to become costly to run. Automation techniques were introduced to decrease personnel costs and one such technique is the Interactive Voice Response (IVR). The usability of IVR systems is, however, dismal. Customers would rather speak to a contact centre agent than navigate through the menu structure found in these systems. The menu structure has come under scrutiny because it is difficult to use and navigate, is often not aligned to caller usage patterns, and the menu options are long and vague. This research investigated whether a Natural Language Interface (NLI) could alleviate the problems inherent to IVR. NLIs, however, come with their own disadvantages of which the main ones are ambiguity and the loss of context of a conversation. Two prototypes were implemented, one of which resembled an IVR and the other an NLI (using ALICE concepts). An evaluation of two prototypes confirmed the advantages and disadvantages of these concepts in accordance to theory. A Hybrid prototype was proposed with the aid of two models. The model which proposed an NLI using a rule base was chosen for implementation. The Hybrid prototype was then evaluated against the NLI and IVR prototypes to deduce which prototype was the most effective, efficient and satisfying. The evaluation through the aid of descriptive and inferential statistics showed that the Hybrid prototype was the most usable prototype. The evaluation of the Hybrid prototype confirmed that a Hybrid approach could limit the shortcomings of IVR through the elimination of the menu structure found in these systems, thereby allowing users to state their queries in natural language. The incorporated rule base provided the Hybrid system with long term memory, eliminating one of the main disadvantages of NLIs
Advisors/Committee Members: Greyling, J Prof, Vogts, D Dr.

Pre-visualisation is an important tool for planning films during the pre-production phase of filmmaking. Existing pre-visualisation authoring tools do not effectively support the user in authoring pre-visualisations without impairing software usability. These tools require the user to either have programming skills, be experienced in modelling and animation, or use drag-and-drop style interfaces. These interaction methods do not intuitively fit with pre-production activities such as floor planning and storyboarding, and existing tools that apply a storyboarding metaphor do not automatically interpret user sketches.
The goal of this research was to investigate how sketch-based user interfaces and methods from computer vision could be used for supporting pre-visualisation authoring using a storyboarding approach. The requirements for such a sketch-based storyboarding tool were determined from literature and an interview with Triggerfish Animation Studios. A framework was developed to support sketch-based pre-visualisation authoring using a storyboarding approach. Algorithms for describing user sketches, recognising objects and performing pose estimation were designed to automatically interpret user sketches. A proof of concept prototype implementation of this framework was evaluated in order to assess its usability benefit. It was found that the participants could author pre-visualisations effectively, efficiently and easily. The results of the usability evaluation also showed that the participants were satisfied with the overall design and usability of the prototype tool. The positive and negative findings of the evaluation were interpreted and combined with existing heuristics in order to create a set of guidelines for designing similar sketch-based pre-visualisation authoring tools that apply the storyboarding approach. The successful implementation of the proof of concept prototype tool provides practical evidence of the feasibility of sketch-based pre-visualisation authoring. The positive results from the usability evaluation established that sketch-based interfacing techniques can be used effectively with a storyboarding approach for authoring pre-visualisations without impairing software usability.
Advisors/Committee Members: Vogts, D Dr, Naudé, K A.